


someone is friendless, and cannot find their way (so I keep a light in my window)

by philthestone



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and theres nothing i like writing more than a semi-bittersweet happy ending, everyone else is like THERE but not mentioned as much so, i just really love gamora okay, she deserves a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 07:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11309022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: She’d had her own room, yes, because thank the stars Peter had the sense to move some of his junk out of the various hidey holes in the ship into the cargo bay on the assumption that theywouldall kill each other within the week if they didn’t have their own spaces, but she’d been stuck in a modified M-ship built for half the number of people it was housing, and her housemates were a motley assortment of questionably sane males and a baby tree.Things aren’t all that different now, except for a few significant changes:The Quadrant is definitely bigger than an M-ship; Mantis ishere, trying her best to learn how to smile and keeping on a pair of gloves Gamora had dug out of her own bag for her; and Gamora is … comfortable.





	someone is friendless, and cannot find their way (so I keep a light in my window)

**Author's Note:**

> U GUYS,,,,, I NEED TO STOP WRITING GOTG FIC OF ALL THINGS IN THE WORLD,,, BUT GAMORA DESERVES HAPPY GOOD THINGS
> 
> anyways. i have a lot of emotions abt this girl. violent green space mom needs to b happy and safe with her weird family and murderbot little sister and dorky space husband forever & i for one can't wait until thanos is obliterated into nothingness so that she can life her life freely and with ease!!!
> 
> title's from the get down, bc we ARE talking iconic seventies pop songs, are we not!!! and reviews would be blessed and good

She has to relearn a lot of things.

This is a thought Gamora has, one of the first nights she falls asleep in a dog-pile of different-shaped limbs in the captain’s cabin on the Quadrant. Peter is draped against her side, his face pressed against her shoulder; Drax is hugging him from behind, Rocket is curled up against her knee, and Groot has nestled himself into her hair, somewhere, making very soft snuffly noises in his sleep. Kraglin’s feet are hanging off the side of the bed, his face smushed somewhere in the middle of the tangle of limbs, and on her free side, Mantis is curled up into a ball, hands kept close to herself, nose occasionally twitching as she breathes in and out.

It’s the only way any of them can fall asleep.

So – she has to relearn a lot of things. She’s not used to a lot of body heat, for one thing. Her own temperature is easily controllable, her body mods allowing her to bring it up or down according to her needs. She rarely needs a blanket for anything more than comfort – something she’d slowly come to allow herself in the months aboard the Milano before everything imploded so spectacularly this past week – let alone the heat of someone else’s body. It’s impractical, she thinks. Not at all a reliable thing, if you start depending on that heat to survive the night or get your required minimum four time parts of sleep. If you’re not like Gamora is – not able to control your temperature – how can you put your trust in something like that? You _couldn’t,_ Gamora thinks, is the point. It could be _too_ hot, or your bunk partners could steal all the blankets and then you’d be colder than when you started, or the people whose heat you needed could – go.

Be gone.

That, Gamora thinks, is a very real possibility.

She resists the urge to wrap her other arm around Peter’s shoulders and takes a long, deep breath. 

It’s the first time in a _long_ time that Gamora’s had difficulty sleeping on her own, and it’s weirding her out. Even in the weeks, the months after Ronan, they spent their time in different rooms. The Milano was almost painfully cramped, and Gamora would be lying if she didn’t admit to spending half her time fighting back the urge to up and leave, just for a few hours, even to stick her head out of airlock so that she could _breathe_ and maybe not trip over the latest knick knack or half-built bomb of pair of boots that someone had left lying around in the middle of the hallway. Which was ironic, considering there was no air in space.

Really put things into perspective.

She’d had her own room, yes, because thank the stars Peter had the sense to move some of his junk out of the various hidey holes in the ship into the cargo bay on the assumption that they _would_ all kill each other within the week if they didn’t have their own spaces, but she’d been stuck in a modified M-ship built for half the number of people it was housing, and her housemates were a motley assortment of questionably sane males and a baby tree.

Things aren’t all that different now, except for a few significant changes:

The Quadrant is definitely bigger than an M-ship; Mantis is _here_ , trying her best to learn how to smile and keeping on a pair of gloves Gamora had dug out of her own bag for her; and Gamora is … comfortable.

Comfort is another thing that Gamora has to learn.

Or – she _is_ learning, slowly, she realizes. She _has_ been learning. She doesn’t tense as immediately when she accidentally brushes forearms with Drax in the kitchen. Her limbs are looser in her seat when she sits across from where Rocket is assembling his latest contraption and humming under his breath, her legs spread apart and her elbows unlocked as she cleans her weapons. She’s fine with Groot perching himself on her shoulder, or nestling against her hipbone when she sits, always climbing aboard without much warning even though Rocket’s been trying to teach him how to tell when people don’t want to be touched.

Gamora would have told you, almost a year ago, that she did not like to be touched.

She seeks out Peter’s hand under the table, nowadays, and can fall asleep easily surrounded by snoring bunkmates.

She’s learning. 

She wishes that it didn’t take so much pain and hurt to get them – her – _them_ – to this place. She wishes that she doesn’t need this, to be sure of everyone’s presence around her when she gasps awake, certain that one or more of them is dead, gone, out of her reach. She wishes that Peter didn’t still wake up with bruises under his eyes to accompany his tired smile.

She is grateful, though, that they don’t need to explain. None of them – the others understand, like they have been through this too, like they _are_ going through this too, and the dog-pile in the captain’s cabin happens unprompted and willing. 

“‘S how Ravagers’d sleep,” Kraglin says, some time on the second day After. “Prob’ly started ‘cause we didn’t have enough room on board for private bunks ‘n shit, but dang. Gets you feelin’ real cosy. Pete always complained about it, though.”

She understands, she thinks; sometimes, Mantis kicks. Drax _farts_ , of all things, and Rocket is prone to muttering some truly _bizarre_ things in his sleep. 

Gamora takes another deep breath, feeling Peter’s heartbeat against her side, and wills her body to slow down.

She’s learning. Faster than she had thought she could.

**

It’s a good feeling.

**

She uses the word _relearn_ because so much of her new life consists of moments, habits, routines that she thinks might have once been normal and familiar if Thanos had not – 

If she had not –

If that life was not gone, now.

It had surprised her, those first few weeks aboard the Milano, how strange it felt to have people around you who cooked and cleaned. 

Or tried their best to clean. Made vague, half-hearted attempts at cleaning. The kitchen, at any rate, was cleaned after any cooking happened, because Drax insisted that his wife had had a regimental organizational system in their own kitchen, and it had been the backbone of the household. 

Specifically, Gamora thinks, it felt strange to have people around who cooked and cleaned _for you_ , like that was just normal, a general sentient decency to take turns pitching in and providing food for the people around you because you knew how to cook and they didn’t. 

Gamora was used to fighting her siblings for the best portion of energy rations, and refusing to eat for days on end to prove her strength. Fruit was a luxury, to be hoarded.

No one had just cheerfully _handed_ her a bowl of steaming Unidentifiable Stew before, especially not when she had not had any hand in making it.

“That is acceptable,” Drax had said sincerely, the first time she had protested. “I shall just impart my vast knowledge on the subject on you, the ignorant. I am already teaching Quill how to clean a plate.”

“I _know_ how to clean a damn plate!” Peter’s voice had called from the other room, cracking only very slightly, and Gamora hadn’t been able to stop herself before she called back.

“But do you do it? No.”

Peter started cleaning plates. Drax tried to teach her how to cook.

It did not go well, and Gamora had to learn to accept food, freely given, from others.

She’s gotten better, she thinks, at being alright with it. At taking her place at the table and letting Peter ladle big helpings of whatever he and Drax have cobbled together that day into her bowl before he moves on to Rocket, and then Mantis, and finally himself and Groot before allowing Drax to simply take the pot and finish off what’s left. Everyone gets enough of whatever they’re having to feel like they’ve had seconds even if they don’t need seconds, and if you can’t finish your food, it goes back into one of the hodge-podge containers Peter had dug up out of the cargo bay early on and stuck in the cooling unit for whoever got hungry in the middle of the night to claim as their own.

It’s sort of a system, and it mostly works. “Unidentifiable Stew” easily transitions into “Unidentifiable Fridge Crap”. Gamora no longer grips the side of her bowl with tight fingers like someone’s going to take it away from her before she’s finished, because she doesn’t _need_ to anymore.

“I am Groot?”

“Lookin’ for a job,” Rocket answers for her, not looking up from whatever is in his hands, which quite frankly looks at though it could catch fire any second now. Gamora doesn’t let it bother her, and continues scrolling through the list on her data pad.

“I am Groot.”

“Mmhmm,” she says, pointing. “Dey sent us a list. I’m trying to find something low-stress, you know?”

“I am Groot,” says Groot, like he understands, and Gamora nods.

“You’re right,” she says, letting him climb up onto her knee and peruse their potential job opportunities with her.

She sees Peter before she feels the couch dip, a jolting bounce, where he’s dropped down into the space beside her holding a plate of what looks vaguely like sandwiches.

“Got anything good?”

“There are a few bounties to collect,” Gamora tells him, leaning back so that he can see the pad, too. “They seem low-profile enough. I didn’t want to accept anything – big.”

Peter rubs slightly at the bridge of his nose and makes a face, nodding. 

“Smart. We’re still a bit screwy.”

“We’ve always been a bit screwy,” says Rocket from the floor.

“I am Groot.”

“ _Speak for myself_? Alright, smartass, listen up –”

“More screwy than usual,” Peter is quick to amend, casually dropping his plate onto Gamora’s unoccupied knee and holding out his hand – a question, one that she easily answers, slipping the pad over to him and leaning back against the couch to tap her finger against Groot’s hand in a funny sort of game. Peter told her the other day that it looks a bit like a _very_ weird version of an old Terran baby game called Patty’s Cook, but Gamora doesn’t think that sounds much like a real thing.

“Krylorian, Krylorian, weird purple dude with an orange hole in his forehead, that looks fun, A’skavaarian gang leader – God, how does that even _work_ – hey, Rocket, what d’you know about some lady called Tandaar Rice.”

Rocket looks up, finally, because apparently this is a comment inane enough to get his undivided attention.

“ _Rice_?”

“Yeah, you know, uh –” Peter clears his throat and looks back down at the pad. “That’s – what it says. Sort of. I think. I dunno, I can’t read these weird-ass names –”

“ _Rice_. Tandaar Rice! Who in the frick-all galaxy names their kid _Tandaar Rice_!”

“It’s got five consonants in a row, man, I ain’t been to school since fourth grade –”

“Rice!”

Gamora finds herself sharing an amused look with Groot, who is still on her knee, to the dulcet background tones of “whether or not Rice is a legitimate last name”. She doesn’t even realize her hand has automatically reached out to the plate balanced on her knee until she’s holding on of Peter’s sandwich halves in her hand, hovering in the air in front of her.

She freezes, looking down at it.

“– was named _Taserface_ –” Peter barely spares the sandwich in her hand a glance, turning half around to sort of face her, “go ahead and take as much of that as you want, by the way, I brought extra – anyway, _Rice_ is _not_ that weird of a name –”

“It’s a _food_ that people _put in their mouths_ –”

Gamora blinks, down at the sandwich, and then up at Peter, who is waving the pad around a bit for emphasis, and at Rocket, who has finally dropped his tools and decided to come up and read the name himself, _just_ to prove a point.

“I am Groot,” says Groot, quietly, from her other knee.

Gamora exhales.

“Here,” she says, and tears off a corner of the bread. She doesn’t even know what’s _in_ it, she’s realizing. It was just completely natural for her to – to reach for it. Groot takes the sandwich bite from her hand and smiles, swinging his legs a little bit. Gamora thinks back to the first time Peter tried sneaking food from her plate and she nearly impaled his hand on a fork.

She’s _learning_ , she thinks.

She grins at Groot, and takes a bite of her sandwich, reaching over and tugging the pad from Peter’s still-waving hand before someone knocks it to the floor.

“The first Krylorian,” she says, once she’s swallowed, cutting easily through their nattering. “He seems like an easy grab.”

“Aw, man,” says Rocket, whiskers actually _drooping_. “But I kinda wanted to meet this Rice persona.”

Peter points at the pad emphatically with one finger, his eyes widening. “Rice! I said it was Rice and this piece of shit wouldn’t let up –”

“I ain’t sayin’ it’s a _normal_ name, Quill, I’m just –”

Gamora rolls her eyes and takes another bite of her sandwich.

**

They’re _all_ relearning how to be honest about feelings, so Gamora doesn’t quite feel alone in that respect. Openness and honesty are, quite frankly, _still_ liabilities in their line of work, and were liabilities even more so before; when you’re on your own, Gamora knows, trust extends to your own four (or however many) limbs and maybe your wits, and not much else.

Being able to rely on five other sentient beings for protection is all well and good, but apparently _maintaining relationships_ requires a frequent exchange of verbalized emotions so that everyone is on the same page.

Gamora is not at all familiar with this. It feels very strange, at first, and she has to stop herself more than once from instinctively chastising her team members for showing vulnerability.

Groot’s probably the best of them at it, with very little concept of secrecy or privacy. She has to wonder if it’s because of his age, or simply if that’s who Groot has _always_ been – someone with little to hide, and a lot to give. Mantis would be next, but Gamora has a feeling that her peculiar brand of honesty about feelings is one that’s emerged from a lifetime of feeling far more than just her own emotions and never being taught how to cope with them, and so maybe she shouldn’t be upheld as a standard, either. Kraglin doesn’t stop talking if you can get him to start, usually with the help of a little bit of alcohol, but Gamora has difficulty siphoning the rambling from the feelings, and so maybe he’s still working on that, too. Drax isn’t bad, when he’s in the right mood, paradoxically gentle when he tells Groot about his daughter’s favorite toy, or explains very honestly to Peter that he refuses to engage with the three-legged bug things they have to steal a Nova Corps artifact back from, because once one of them peed on his grandfather and they as a collective will horribly offend him until the end of time.

Rocket shares when he’s piss drunk, and Gamora gets the feeling he always regrets it the day after.

Peter – 

Peter’s an interesting case, Gamora thinks, because there are moments where she almost wants to say he’s better at it than all of them, at being able to communicate how he feels. His face is one of the most easily readable things Gamora has ever seen, like a solar flare of emotions, and she frequently has to wonder just how he survived for so long on his own, without the rest of the team there to pull him out of trouble. Freely giving away your emotions is _foolish_ , Gamora learned long ago, regardless of your line of work.

She’s still trying to unlearn parts of that, maybe not _from_ him, but – with him.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

The scraggly underbrush of Berhert is not the most comfortable of places to sit, but it was one of those moments, again, that Gamora needed to just breathe. Repairing the Milano could take weeks; better to pace themselves, and not be at each other’s throats again before they can get anything useful done.

And, well – they’re still – recovering.

Peter sits down cross-legged, an oddly endearing habit for someone with such long limbs, and a habit which Gamora thinks with a slight frown she’s picked up from him without realizing; her own legs are crossed.

 _Criss-cross applesauce_ , he’d called it once, laughter in his voice. She did not know what apples were, and had no idea how sauce related to one’s legs. But she trusted him, she’d realized, even on something as utterly inane as that.

It was an odd feeling.

“You and Rocket stopped yelling,” Gamora notices, letting her hands rest on her knees comfortably.

“Yeah, ‘cause Groot stopped trying to crawl into the propulser engines. He’s safe now, it’s fine,” he adds quickly at her alarmed expression, and then heaves a big sigh, the sort that drags at your shoulders, and rubs a tired hand over his face.

Gamora watches as his hand leaves the hair on his face and forehead sticking up at odd angles, and then lets herself frown at the lingering bruises under his eyes.

“You’re still not sleeping well,” she says, because if there is a problem, then they should talk about it. That is the key to maintaining trust with another being, is what she is trying her best to re-learn. 

“I’m fine.”

So much for learning together.

“Peter.”

He makes a funny noise, almost like a whine, and then drops his head back to look at her.

There it is again – the solar flare. Gamora didn't know people's faces could _go_ that soft before she'd met Peter, which is a ridiculous line of thought. Of course they could, of course it -- just because it had never been directed towards _her_ \--

And then,

“I’m so sorry, Gamora.”

Whatever it was she was expecting, Gamora thinks, an apology that sounds like it’s tearing itself away from the depths of his chest was _not_ it. She tries her best not to frown and fails, badly.

“What?" 

"I needed to --"

"Peter, what are you talking about?”

“I just –” He leans back even further, and she has to immediately quash the thought that _he’s exposing his neck, that’s an idiot move_ before he starts again – “I was such a complete _dick_ to you on E – on the planet, and I never apologized –”

“Peter –”

“No, just –” He looks at her, eyebrows creased and eyes wide, as though this is something that is genuinely bothering him. Gamora lets her mouth slide shut. “I shouldn’t have – have made you dance with me, or said all that dumb shit about TV ratings and gotten mad and –” He breaks off and makes a face that would be comical if Gamora was not – _completely_ ridiculously – swallowing back a lump in her throat.

“Peter,” she says, “I wanted to dance with you."

“Yeah,” he’s staring at the ground, now.

"But thank you.”

"For what," he huffs, a brand of self-deprecation Gamora feels is their collective specialty pulling down on his words. 

“For apologizing,” she says, simply. Sometimes, she knows, the best tactical maneuver is a simple one. 

“It was still shitty.” His shoulders are hunched in, hands fiddling with each other, the heel of one boot digging into the forest floor methodically. Gamora watches as the dirt is displaced over and over again. “Like, respecting each other’s space and stuff – we’re supposed to be working on all that crap, and you’re – you’re my best friend, you know? I don’t want you to think that I’m not happy with that.”

She thinks of how he’s the first person in her working memory with whom she’s been able to share jokes; how they can swap easy, exasperated looks over the others’ heads when the arguments are unravelling into chaotic messes, like they _understand_ something, about each other; how sometimes, she’ll say something, do something – completely meaningless and banal, something that she does every day, and he’ll be looking at her with that peculiar sort of light in his smile, like he can’t believe how lucky he is to just _be_ there, in that room, with her.

He is so terribly easy to read, she thinks again, and then about how equally easy it is to sit with him, and tell each other stories, or simply hold hands. She’s never held hands with anyone before, like she sometimes does with Peter. She’s never had a best friend before either, so she doesn’t have much of a frame of reference, but. 

She thinks – she _thinks_ she’s already learned what that means.

Articulating feelings, though. That's a whole other kettle of fish, as Rocket once put it, leading to a prolonged conversation about how no, Drax, we do not actually have any kettles with fish on them aboard this ship.

“Somebody once told me,” she says, carefully, slowly, instead of voicing aloud the _I’ve never had a best friend before_ line of thought, “that even if we’ve done shitty things in the _past_ , we’re not doing shitty things anymore, and that’s what really counts.”

Peter huffs out a breath.

“Gamora –”

“And that was about murder,” she tells him seriously, “so if you can tell _me_ that, then I’m pretty sure I can say that I forgive you on _this_ without you feeling like you don’t deserve it.”

His face is soft again, and she suppresses the urge to smile at the way his bangs are still sticking up oddly against his forehead. _Some unspoken thing_ , he’d said, and Gamora had truly not thought that anything was unspoken, but then. Then. She’s re-learning things – feelings – _sharing_ – isn’t she?

“You’re the best,” says Peter. “You know that, right?”

“I’m learning,” says Gamora, out loud, frowning a little again. “I think we all are.”

“Yeah,” he says. From behind them, there’s an ominous _clang_ , and the sound of Rocket swearing, and what Gamora thinks might be Kraglin’s strangled scream, and Mantis’s overloud laughter. She’s even louder than Drax, sometimes. 

They sit, for another few moments, before they go to make sure nobody’s died.

**

She’s always been good at controlling her own body, at regulating her vitals and exerting just the right amount of strength, but it’s easy to sometimes forget that not everyone is built the same way as she is.

It’s fine if she’s with Drax, or even Nebula – and she doesn’t think about how there’s a small pang in her belly that misses her sister more than she had ever thought possible – but around Groot? Or Mantis? 

“I’m sorry,” says Gamora, for the tenth time. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean – I didn’t realize how hard I was –”

“It is fine!” Mantis repeats, also for the tenth time, allowing Peter to hold the icepack Drax had dug out from the back end of the cooling unit over her wrist. She’s smiling that weird too-wide smile of hers, which Gamora thinks is absolutely ridiculous considering she almost accidentally snapped the other girl’s wrist when grabbing it across the table to make sure she didn’t knock over a bowl. “It was an accident, yes?”

“Yes,” says Gamora, nodding as hard as she can. “Yes, _yes_ , I _won’t_ let it happen again, I –”

“Gamora,” says Peter, gently, stopping her mid-ramble, his eyes looking up from the icepack to meet hers.

Drax is in the kitchen, cleaning up, because the bowl had been knocked to the floor _anyway_ when Mantis had yelped aloud in pain, Gamora’s elbow smashing into it when she yanked her hand away with surprise.

 _Gently_.

Peter, for all his mess and obnoxious quips and disarray, is very good, Gamora has noticed, at being gentle. 

She wonders, sometimes, if all Terrans are the same, or if Peter is unique in his tendency to be overtly tactile. He’s started warning her before he’s does anything – little quirks of the eyebrows, very slight nudges of his fingers against her elbow before he rests his head on her shoulder or drapes an arm around her. He’s learning too, she thinks, and something about that makes her chest feel warm and steady in a way that she is not entirely familiar with. It’s getting easier, not to tense, or flinch away on instinct for that split second before regaining control.

But accepting gentleness is one thing; _being_ gentle is another.

Gamora watches mutely as Mantis takes the icepack from Peter’s hands and reassures him again that she’s totally fine, and then stands up from the couch. 

“Please do not worry, Gamora,” she says, to her, so sincere and genuine that it’s almost disconcerting. “It was an accident. The angry puppy says those happen a lot in this place.”

“This angry puppy can _hear_ you!” comes Rocket’s – well, _angry_ – voice from the ship’s main hallway. “I ain’t a puppy, bug-girl!”

Mantis’s face falls, dramatically. “Oh no! I keep forgetting – I am sorry, Rocket –”

Gamora watches her trail out of the room after Rocket’s voice, spouting a steady stream of apologies, mystified. 

“She’s more upset that she might have hurt Rocket’s feelings than the fact that I almost broke her arm,” she says.

“Eh,” says Peter. “Feelings are messy. Limbs and stuff –” He waves his arms around, like a moron – “those can be replaced.”

Gamora blinks at him. 

“Mostly. Sort of.” He makes a face. “Sorry if that was insensitive.”

“No,” she says honestly, because he’s right – they can be replaced. Feelings are not that simple. “That’s fine. But –”

“I know what you’re going to say,” says Peter, “and the answer is _no_ , you’re not, you’re doing fine.”

“I _should_ be able to control my strength,” she says, ignoring him, trying and failing to not curl her fingers into fists on her lap. “There is no reason why –”

“But you can control your strength, babe, c’mon –” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and Gamora unfurls her hands at the slight finger-tap on her leg so that he can take them. He’s started doing that too, she thinks, without realizing it almost – terms of endearment slipping out and tugging at her chest in a way she isn’t used to. "Look, here, let's go over this. When was the last time something like this happened? And don't say the other week when you kicked my ass practicing hand-to-hand, 'cause I totally knew what I was getting into _and_ you should know that that was seriously badass, and you're gonna teach me that leg-flip disarming thing."

It’s – nice. Really nice.

"I don't think you can lift your leg up that high," she tells him, frowning.

Peter scrunches his nose up. "Mm, yeah. Probably might dislocate my hip. But hey - look at that, _you_ didn't end up dislocating my hip, that's proof of how you're fine!" 

“I need to be more careful,” Gamora says again, because that is the truth. She’s learning to be honest and open, after all. And knocking Peter to the mat-covered floor of the cargo bay whilst practicing hand-to-hand combat is very different from accidentally spraining Mantis's wrist in the middle of dinner, even if Peter does still have a bruise shaped like Nova Prime's hairdo on his bicep.

"It makes me look battle worn and badass," he'd reassured her for most of the past week, grinning that stupid lopsided grin of his; "I'm totally into it, don't worry, okay?"

Not worrying is easier said than done.

“You _are_ careful,” Peter says now, back. “Look at how you are with Groot! He’s just a baby, and you’ve never hurt him once.”

“Quill is correct,” says Drax’s booming voice abruptly from behind them, making Peter jump and Gamora look around calmly. “You are very adept at using your warrior’s strength for good.” He nods, approving, like that’s all Gamora needs to be chill about this.

She swallows.

“Thank you,” she says, as sincerely as she can. Drax brushes his hands off on the legs of his pants, and a few shards of glass bowl sprinkle onto the ground; he nods again. 

“Besides,” he says, “you are hardly that strong. I knew a Kantaarian once –”

“Alright, Drax, man,” says Peter, huffing a sigh, but Gamora finds herself laughing, the tension in her shoulders spilling out.

“What?” says Drax. “She was incredibly well-muscled.”

“He’s right,” says Gamora, “Kantaarians have huge biceps.”

“That’s not the point, here, we’re tryin’a –” Peter shakes his head back and forth, his bangs flopping. “I dunno, have an intervention, or something.”

“That sounds very painful,” says Drax, at the same time Gamora says, “An intervention?”

Peter does a funny thing with his shoulders that might be a shrug.

“You – y’know. That’s a thing, people do. They said it on TV all the time, when people were emotional about shit.”

“I do not know what that is,” says Drax, tilting his head.

Peter looks at Gamora expectantly.

“I don’t think Peter knows what it is, either,” say Gamora, unable to stop the curl of her lips in spite of herself when Peter groans dramatically and drops his forehead against their still-joined hands. She’s still smiling when Drax grabs his knives from the table at the far end of the room and nods at her on his way out, something oddly knowing in his expression.

Drax doesn’t do _knowing_ , so that’s strange in and of itself, but Gamora finds that she can’t stop smiling. Some of the tension in her stomach has loosened; maybe _that's_ what an intervention is.

“Thank you, Drax,” she says again.

“You are welcome, Gamora,” he says, pausing at the door and glancing down to where Peter’s face is still smushed against their knees. “And – it is a simple matter of practice. I will tell Mantis to toughen herself up.”

“Oh, wait – no, Drax –”

“Aaaand he’s gone,” says Peter, cracking an eye open and lifting his head up from face-plant position. “Don't’ worry, Mantis’ll be fine. I think.”

Gamora laughs; maybe she shouldn’t, but it’s easy, and that makes her hold on to it. She’s learned that, at least. Peter’s smile is lopsided, but his eyes are creasing at the corners with the sincerity of it. This is a fact about him that she has filed away, under the umbrella of _Peter Quill: facial expressions_ ; eye-crinkling means that the smile is genuine. Filing away information makes re-learning things a lot easier, and there are so many little things about Peter that can be easily taken and filed. Gamora looks down at their still entwined hands and thinks about how all of the smiles he gives her make his eyes crinkle.

“What?” asks Peter, still a bit lopsided. 

_Gentle_ , Gamora thinks, and leans over to press a kiss against his cheek.

When she pulls away, his eyes are wide, like he’s not quite sure what just happened, and Gamora wonders whether it isn’t easier for her, to re-learn love, when it’s given so freely and warmly and honestly in just one look. It’s that same open, adoring look that the small, niggling voice at the back of her head insists is going to get him killed one day. But the rest of her is not that voice, and she wonders if it is wrong of her to want to hold onto this, this foolish feeling of being for a moment the only important thing in the cosmos.

She’s learning – that that’s okay, maybe. That it isn’t wholly foolish.

“It’s a matter of practice,” she tells him seriously, repeating Drax’s words. “Kissing can be gentle, right?”

Her fingers are still pressing against his wrist, and she nearly frowns at the sudden uptick in his heartbeat, nearly asks him if he’s alright. A medical condition, maybe? Terran physiology is very confusing, Gamora has come to know. But then –

“Yeah,” he says, voice coming out half-cracking, eyes still wide. “Sure, yeah.”

Gamora doesn’t even try to stop her smile.

**

They’ve stopped sleeping in a dog-pile, which is not necessarily something Gamora misses, but she’s still not sleeping alone.

She didn’t use to sleep alone. She wonders at what point she learned _enough_ to be so utterly at ease with this.

Trust is a funny sort of word. 

She’s re-learning that, too.

Gamora can’t remember much of her parents, or the shape and feel of her home as a child. The details of her kitchen, for example, are completely lost to her, as is the position of her parents’ cot in the big room they all slept in. It was big, though, she remembers. That, and – her mother’s laughter. When she was with Thanos, each person slept in a cubicle of their own, fitting neatly into the wall. It took two months for her to stop sneaking out in the middle of the night to hold Nebula’s hand until she fell asleep. It took two years for her to stop missing her parents’ bed.

Now, she can barely remember it.

Trust is a funny sort of word, and it requires a particular brand of it to co-habit a small space like a bedroom with someone else, to fall asleep and wake up with them day in and day out without feeling discomfort. She’s started lowering her body heat on instinct the moment she slips into bed at nights, started allowing herself to sleep in positions that are not specifically ideal for snapping awake with a knife to someone’s throat in a split second.

Not that they don’t keep a spare knife under their pillow _just in case_ , but Gamora thinks she’s come a long way in re-learning how to co-exist with someone … gently.

She’s not sure who made the executive decision, or if it was even made, but everyone else started filtering back to their own spaces after a week or so of dogpiling and she just … stayed. In Peter’s room. In the captain’s room, which Kraglin insisted Peter use, at least while they’re on the Quadrant and the Milano’s still stuck planetside in the midst of repairs. And in Peter’s bed, which she supposes is really not his bed but both of theirs. It was theirs before it was ever his, personally, and something about that sits right with her.

They hold hands, sometimes, before they fall asleep, or even just for the sake of it, lying there and talking into the small hours of the night. They didn’t used to do that, during their late nights in the kitchen, with the Walkman sitting quietly between them in case Peter needed it for whatever reason, swapping stories. But they do it now, in the bed. The Zune doesn’t need headphones to play songs for them, to compliment the stories they still swap. And there are other things, too – she actually _likes_ the feeling of a leg, heavy with sleep, flung over her thighs. She feels strange if she’s sitting in the bed on her own, if he’s stumbled out in the middle of the night to claim the Unidentifiable Fridge Crap bowl or to pee; he always stubs his toe on the bathroom doorway, and the accompanying litany of swear words is how she can tell. 

The warmth of a hand curled against her abdomen or the tickle of his curls in her nose are becoming _normal_.

It’s a scary thought, sort of, because normality in things like this means that it will always be harder to deal with if it changes. 

If it’s lost.

She’s learning to compartmentalize, though. That’s what Peter calls it: compartmentalization. He says it in a way that makes her feel like he himself isn’t overly sure of what exactly it entails, and he’s trying to deal just as much as she is, but – she knows. She _knows_ : she can’t live in – she can’t _live_ , like that. Touch is unreliable, and dependency on touch even more so, but Gamora is learning.

Is _re-_ learning. Her mother and father used to hold hands, she remembers, one evening in the quiet of the bedroom, Peter’s off-tune humming serving as background music from where he’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom.

Right now, though, her eyes have flicked open because she can’t unlearn the sharpness of her ears, and she’s been a light sleeper for as long as she can possibly remember.

The tell-tale pitter patter outside their door is enough to have her smile softly into the dark of the room and shift, arms slipping out from the covers to rest over Peter’s haphazardly outstretched arm. The door swooshes open, nearly inaudible, and Gamora lets her eyes close again, ready for what’s next.

“I am Groot?”

His whisper isn’t nearly as anguished as it has been in the past, trembly and running from whatever bad dreams tiny trees have to deal with in the night. It’s light, expectant.

“Come on up, Groot,” she whispers back, stretching her fingers out and wiggling them at where she knows the little guy will be poking his head over the corner of the bed. 

Every other night, like clockwork.

They may have all mostly re-migrated back to their own rooms, but Groot can be stubborn. And who knows, thinks Gamora. Maybe he actually needs the body heat.

And – bad dreams a tricky things. She’s still not managed to beat all of hers away.

She can feel Groot clamber up the bed and over their tangle of limbs to finally collapse happily against the empty pillow space between her and Peter, yawning once before curling up into a little ball. On the other side, Peter snuffles a bit in his sleep, most of his face smooshed against the bedding. His hair is sticking up into the air from when he’d last turned over, and he groans, very softly, shifting in position. 

“Mmh – Groo’s here ‘gain, babe.”

And then he’s back to snoring.

Peter, Gamora has come to realize, could probably sleep through an actual apocalypse, if it weren’t for the bad dreams and stressful life events and general high levels of anxiety that accompanied their line of work. Which _suck,_ Gamora thinks. As convenient as it is to be able to wake up at the slightest rustle, she sometimes wonders what kind of ease sleep would afford you if you really could pass out as heavily as Peter does when he isn’t worrying about General Traumatic Life Events and Their Aftereffects.

Though, to be fair – they’re _all_ worrying about that. Always. Mostly. It’s a balance, Gamora thinks. 

She’s getting better at deep sleep too, though, and he’s getting better with nightmares – it’s been _months_ since – months After – and Gamora can curl around against him without worrying too much, allowing herself one last smile at Groot’s face, smiling already even in sleep against the crowded pillow, before sliding her eyes shut again and willing her body to slow back down.

She feels Peter’s arm tug at her gently right before she falls asleep, and she thinks: _she’s learning_.

It’s a good thought. 

Gamora sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> a couple things:  
> \- narrative's not wholly linear, so sorry about that  
> \- i don't know much abt gamora's comics backstory so i kinda just bounced off what the movies have given me, pls dont drag me in that respect  
> \- i just realized that i have peter and gamora holding hands in like every single scene of all my gotg fics WOW PHIL COME ON they just. would be good @ holding hands ok  
> \- gamora and her tiny tree son groot is the purest thing in the mcu so jot that down  
> \- hope u enjoyed!


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